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My Life in Music Cognition Research

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My Life in Music Cognition Research Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, & Brain Copyright 2010 Psychomusicology 2009, Vol. 20, No. 1 & No. 2 doi: 10.5084/PMMB2009/20/53 My life in music cognition research W. JAY DOWLING University of Texas at Dallas abstract—The author traces his interest and was playing records at my education in music from childhood through adulthood. grandparents’ house, and He describes the development of ideas about his core I inadvertently sat on a work, involving interleaved melodies, auditory attention, Gigli “La Donna é Mobile”; memory representation for melody, and “expectancy of course the lacquer windows,” among other topics. Important ideas, influential disc was smashed. I was teachers, and main collaborators are described from his very embarrassed, but dissertation work at Harvard to early jobs at UCLA and I think my grandfather Cal State L.A., to his position in the School of Behav- was just relieved that it ioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas. The author’s wasn’t something less interest in the development of melody perception stems W. Jay Dowling expendable. from observation of his own children. More recent work My father’s collec- on memory for melodies and on aging and music cogni- tion differed from my grand- father’s in its tion is also covered. The article ends with a discussion devotion to Gilbert and Sullivan; he had five or six of changes that have taken place in music psychology of the operettas in their massive twelve-disc albums. over the past 40 years. During the 1940s one of my father’s friends, who taught metal shop and who came from somewhere in the Southwest of England, got the high-school faculty and students to put on a Gilbert and Sullivan I was born in Washington, D. C., on February 4, production, complete with a small orchestra which 1941, and grew up in Northern Virginia where my he would conduct from the piano. The most impres- father taught industrial arts (wood shop, metal shop, sive role my father played was the Chief of Police drafting, and printing) at Fairfax High School. Both in The Pirates of Penzance. I remember vividly his my father and grandfather (my mother’s father) billy club—they turned out the billy clubs in wood played the violin, though my father, who had grown shop—decorated with the words of his songs, just in up in upstate New York, referred to what he did as case he forgot. (“When the foeman bares his steel “fiddling.” Some of my earliest memories are of him …”). He was also Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore, playing dance tunes like Turkey in the Straw and The and at least one of my very proper aunts thought Irish Washerwoman. My mother played the piano, and that my mother ought not to take me (then four or Sinding’s Rustle of Spring was one of our favorites. five) to see my father play such a scruffy character. It’s probably good that I didn’t develop absolute She did, though, and I enjoyed it immensely. pitch, however, because our ancient upright, though The most spectacular thing my father did was it had a good sound, could not be tuned up to stan- only indirectly connected to music, however. At the dard pitch, and so I grew up listening to a B# piano. end of the war he learned that the linotype machine Both my father and grandfather were avid collec- from Gen. Patton’s headquarters was being sold as tors of records, and they each had about 500 or 600 surplus in New York, and he pursuaded the school of them. Both of them had extensive collections of W. Jay Dowling, School of Behavioral & Brain Sciences, Italian opera arias, including Caruso, Tito Schipa, University of Texas at Dallas. John McCormack, and Jussi BjÖrling. My father’s Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to W. Jay Dowling, School of Behavioral & Brain favorite was Martinelli. Both of them were devoted Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell to Fritz Kreisler. Once when I was six or seven, I Road, Richardson TX 75080. E-mail: [email protected]. 53 182045 UPEI - Circle Folio 55 - 06/14/2010 - 14:33:53 W. Jay Dowling adminstration to acquire it for his print shop. who had played trombone in a ship’s band in the Then he and my mother and I went to New York South Pacific, became my first music teacher. I think where he arranged the sale and shipping for the I made decent progress, but as I approached high machine, and my mother and I explored the city. school it became apparent that I would never have Once the large and complicated machine was back any facility with the upper register of the baritone, in Virginia, he rebuilt it from the bottom up and and the logical choice seemed to be to switch to restored it to working order. Linotype machines, tuba. I was very happy playing tuba, and continued a triumph of 19th-century technology, have since to play all the way through graduate school. I partic- disappeared from the industrial landscape, but ularly enjoyed the Bach cello suites and Beethoven’s then it was useful to students to know how to cello sonatas, though I must caution the reader that operate them. The machines were in some ways those are much more fun to play on the tuba than dangerous monsters—apt to squirt molten lead at to listen to. My younger sister is an excellent flutist, the operator at odd moments—but I always enjoyed and I heard quite a lot of the standard flute litera- watching and listening to them. The machinery ture, and we enjoyed playing Handel’s flute sonatas was driven by a large cam shaft going through the with the tuba as the continuo instrument. middle of the machine, and as it went through its When I graduated from high school in 1959 my cycle, levers, connected to the various components parents gave me a trip to New York with Mr. Fuller to that performed the machine’s functions, were have a lesson from Bill Bell, the eminent New York pushed and pulled in an elaborate and fascinat- tuba player, and to see a show. As luck would have ing rhythm, difficult to notate. You could tell from it, we were able to see West Side Story at the Winter listening to the rhythm what the machine was up to Garden. I had been a fan of Leonard Bernstein’s at each instant. all through the 50s, trying never to miss his illus- trated TV lectures on our seven-inch black and white screen. The opportunity to see West Side Story school years was irresistable, and I pursuaded Mr. Fuller that we really had to see it. (He had some misgivings The machine also facilitated the school print shop because he viewed some of the content as “adult.” taking on a project proposed by my father’s friend, However, I think my parents fully approved, in spite Phil Fuller, the school band director, who came to of what my proper aunts might have said.) The show, Fairfax with a master’s degree from Northwestern. as you can imagine, was absolutely stunning, musi- Mr. Fuller was active in the Virginia Band and cally and visually and emotionally. I had never seen Orchestra Directors’ Association (VBODA), and anything like it. I remember vividly the moment wanted to put the VBODA Manual, the list of when, in the darkened theater, the alto begins sing- approved solo and ensemble pieces for state music ing Somewhere. festivals, in better shape. We took on the job of Another good experience Mr. Fuller facilitated publishing the manual. I was then 10 or 12 and for me was to have me serve as student director of adept at typesetting and making corrections in the the band during my senior year. We had a stage set type after its proofs were corrected, and this band that played during intermission for the junior exercise familiarized me with the solo literature and senior plays, usually medleys from Broadway available in print for a wide range of instruments. shows. I got to select the music (from South Pacific, (It has always surprised me that there was no equiva- Oklahoma, and The King and I) and rehearse and lent of Books in Print for published music.) direct the performances. I also made an arrange- When I was eight or so my parents consulted with ment of one of Bach’s Christmas Cantatas (No. Mr. Fuller because they thought it was time for me 142—some say it was written by Johann Kuhnau) to begin learning to play an instrument, which I was that the choir was working on for the Christmas eager to do. After considerable testing and discus- concert, but as it turned out we only did the final sion we settled on the baritone horn, and Mr. Fuller, chorus with band and choir together. 54 182045 UPEI - Circle Folio 56 - 06/14/2010 - 14:33:53 My life in music cognition college puzzling about—questions about man’s place in the universe, about our understanding of our world, After graduation, attracted by the prospect of a snow- both natural and social, and about the meaning of ier winter than in Virginia, and encouraged by Mr. music—could be addressed empirically. Campbell’s Fuller, I went to the Music School at Northwestern to approach was in the tradition of the American prag- continue my education. I had done well on the SATs matism of Peirce and James and Dewey, which is to a s well a s on tuba, and t hey gave me a scholarship.
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